Dull Edges

Weather: Some smoke pollution, with more clouds than rain. Daylily leaves are recovering, but some cherry leaves are turning yellow early.

Last useful rain: 8/18. Week’s low: 50 degrees F. Week’s high: 88 degrees F in the shade.

What’s blooming in the area: Hybrid roses, yellow potentilla, desert willow, trumpet creeper, bird of paradise, silver lace vine, red-tipped yuccas, Russian sage, rose of Sharon, purple phlox, datura, sweet pea, annual four o’clocks, alfalfa, farmer’s sunflowers, coreopsis, black-eyed Susan, chrysanthemums, corn

What’s blooming in my yard: Miniature roses, caryopteris, hosta, garlic chives, golden spur columbine, large-flowered soapwort, David phlox, winecup mallow, hollyhocks, lead plant, pink evening primroses, sea lavender, perennial four o’clock, calamintha, larkspur, white yarrow, chocolate flowers, blanket flowers, Mönch aster, purple cone flowers, bachelor buttons, zinnias

What’s blooming outside the walls and fences: Apache plume, tamarix, trees of heaven, purple mat flower, stick leaf, velvetweed, bindweed, silver leaf nightshade, greenleaf five eyes, leather leaf globemallow, white sweet clover, Queen Anne’s lace, goat’s head, prostate knotweed, toothed spurge, purslane, yellow evening primrose, Hopi tea, fleabane, horseweed, wild lettuce, common and native dandelions, goat’s beard, plain’s paper flower, áñil del muerto, native sunflowers, goldenrod, golden hairy asters, Tahoka daisy, pigweed, Russian thistles, quack grass

Bedding plants: Pansies, sweet alyssum; pansies and dwarf African marigolds locally.

Tasks: Spent part of week digging away a mound left by the ground squirrel when it tunneled under the retaining wall in the winter.

Animal sightings: Cat, rabbit, hummingbirds, other small brown birds, geckos, bumble bees around purple and pink flowers, hornets around garlic chives, other small flying insects, grasshoppers; heard crickets; new ant hills every day.

Weekly update: When I bought the sharper tools I mentioned in last week’s post, I didn’t throw out my old ones. I had used or abused them when I needed to cut stems at or below the soil. Dirt doesn’t hone.

I have learned the blades have their own hierarchy, that is only partly related to the advertized differences in diameter capabilities. I can use the nippers on anything, grass or stem, so long as it isn’t woody. For that, I need the pruners, but they absolutely won’t cut the needle grass that volunteers around my beds.

The old loppers don’t like to cut green stems, but I can force them to rip off white sweet clover and Maximilian sunflower stems. They act more like a pair of pliers than anything. Since I don’t trust the new ones to keep their edge, I’m not wasting them on such tasks.

One of the tricks one learns when tools are dull is which stems really need cutting, and which will break off. Stems of plants like columbine with fat roots break off. Ones that are shallow have to be cut, else the roots come out with the stems. However, once some of the stems are cut, they can be broken down by hand or, for thicker ones, over the knee.

I did buy a pair of electric clippers last fall to try on things like the mass of columbine stems, but it was so cold I didn’t go out. I did test them this spring, and they worked on alfalfa. The one required pruners, the other loppers.

My biggest problem was weight. The ones that were battery operated were lighter than the ones with cords because electric motors were attached to the handles rather than to base stations. Then, because I have a post office box, I was limited to what the local store carried. Lithium batteries can’t be shipped through the mail.

Notes on photographs: Potentilla fruticosa ‘Goldfinger’ is the one plant that has bloomed profusely all summer, despite the vagaries of the weather; 18 August 2018.